


buried in gold

by thefudge



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Mindfuck, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sexual Content, soundtrack: shades of cool by lana del rey but more like shades of gold wink wink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 02:20:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18306212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: post 3x17. Betty's confrontation with Edgar doesn't go quite as she expected.





	buried in gold

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [buried in gold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18382208) by [larasorna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/larasorna/pseuds/larasorna)



> fam: write something trashy and smutty about these two! the tension's so good!  
> me: makes it needlessly complicated and weird.  
> ha, what else is new?  
> i'm not super happy with how this turned out but i'm not mad either? you tell me!

_I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child._

Charles Darwin

 

***

 

The room is bathed in black light.

“Please tell me…what do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Betty says without hesitation.

She’s got that youthful lust for life. She thinks she can’t die young.

They all do.

“ _Everything_?” Edgar echoes with a kind, patient smile. “That’s a lofty goal, Betty.”

She was expecting sleaze and sleights of hand, but Edgar Evernever is just so _earnest_ and serene she wants to punch him in his benign, sculpted face.

“No one can know everything. In fact, many shouldn’t even venture. The experience would overwhelm them,” he says with calm and devastating concern in his voice.

Betty leans forward. She doesn’t like his calm. She wants to egg him on. She wants to see something other than affability in that unperturbed gaze.  

“Why not? What are you afraid I’ll find out? I hear the Farm is open to everyone.”  

Edgar’s eyes crinkle until they almost disappear, until he is just his smile.

“Openness is a given, Betty. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

 _There_ it is. Underneath that aw-shucks-we’re-all-family routine there’s a cold snake waiting to strike.

“Is that a threat, Mr. Evernever?”

He blinks, unfazed, and his smile grows thick and warm like honey. “No... but I think you want it to be. It would make things easier for you, wouldn’t it?”

Betty shifts in her chair. “What would?”

“If I were the awful man you think I am.”

Betty shrugs, trying not to appear discomfited. “Prove me wrong. Prove to me that this whole operation isn’t a huge scam or a big ego trip.”

Edgar brushes his thumb against his stubble. “That’s just it, Betty. Life _is_ a scam. Life _is_ a big ego trip. Here at the Farm we accept it.”

“That’s - that’s not an answer.”

Edgar reaches forward, not like a snake, but rather like an eel. His fingers tap gently against her wrist, right on her naked pulse. It’s too late to retract her hand. She’s frozen.

“When you lie awake at night and all the painful memories come rushing in...and you can’t find your peace…” His finger drags lazily against her pulse, gliding down to the scoop of her palm. “That’s when you sink your nails into your skin and hope that one pain can compensate for the other. You think the body can absorb what your mind can't.”

He touches the half-moon indents in the middle of her palm. He caresses the mortified flesh the way an antiquarian touches old books.  

Betty shivers. She stares at him stonily, shaken but unwilling to show it. Always unwilling.

He knows all of this from her mother and Polly. That’s how he knows.

“But the truth is, no amount of pain will get you out of your own head,” Edgar rasps, folding her fingers into her palm. “The only way to stop hurting yourself is to not _be_ that self anymore, Betty.”

She swallows thickly. How can anyone believe this claptrap? And why is she still listening?

“I know it’s hard. Pain can be addictive. It’s easier to break your flesh than change who you are. It feels better too.”

She feels moistness at the corner of her eye. The incense, must be the incense.

Betty clears her throat. “Yeah well, I didn’t come here for your psychobabble. You still haven’t answered my questions.”

Edgar releases her hand. “I will. But I want you to come with me first. I want to show you something.”

“ _No_. I know this trick. There’s no dead person that you can magically reveal to me. Like you did to my mom and Cheryl.”

Edgar laughs and it looks like the sun is spilling from his mouth. There is something sinister about it, like being buried in gold.

 _Why buried?_ she wonders. _Why did I think about being buried?_

“I don’t want to reveal anything or anyone to you, Betty. You’re the one who will reveal something to me.”

She opens her mouth. How did they get here? She’s the one demanding explanations.

Edgar doesn’t read her mind, but he gets pretty close.

“If you want answers, you need to climb down the well with me.”

The words make her think of burials again and she shivers.

 

 

She steps through the green door of the janitor’s closet, guarding herself against whatever vision will be given to her.

The room is larger than she expected. But it also feels narrow like a tunnel, or maybe her perspective is skewed. It’s colder in here than outside. There are shelves on the walls and there are jars filled with dried herbs and strange-looking totems on each row. The air smells of rancid apples.

Edgar speaks behind her.

“I like to call it my pantry. Full of goodies.”

Betty takes a step further. She wishes she could use her flashlight. The light is weak and not be trusted. There is a crunching sound as her sneakers step on stalks. She looks down. There are rushes on the floor, compounding the sweet smell.

Edgar’s voice floats somewhere behind her still. “I keep things here which I find precious. Other people might not. Ah, there’s you, Betty. You’re precious too.”

“I’m not part of your collection -” she begins to say, disturbed by the notion, but his finger is pointing beyond her, towards the end of the tunnel.

Betty frowns. She squints.

The closer she gets the more she wants to turn back.

But that figure - that girl lying on the mattress - it can’t really be -

Betty covers her mouth. 

The other her is sitting on a mattress in a corner. Her doppelganger is wearing her black wig and has wrapped her naked body in lingerie. Her legs are spread wide, hands between her thighs. Her expression is absent but evocative of some kind of lust.

Edgar’s hand reaches up, steadying her from behind. His thumb brushes against Betty’s collarbone.  He speaks into her hair.

“It’s all right. She can't hurt you."

Betty has a hard time breathing.

"You don’t need that girl anymore," he murmurs silkily. "You don’t need the wig or the accessories. You don’t need to undress for people on the internet in order to feel good.”

Betty feels the horror and the shame rising thickly in her throat.

There’s something nasty in the soft consonants on his lips. Sweet rot on his teeth. She looks up at him, certain that she’d find sickness there, on his mouth.

But it’s still warm and leonine.

Edgar smiles at her. His thumb catches a tear at the corner of her eye. “Do you want to help me kill her?”

 

 

It’s such a senseless invitation, such an awful thing to say, but his voice has lost none of its buoyancy. He makes it sound innocent and good.

In the moment, she doesn’t register the shock. She wants this vision to disappear. She nods shakily.

Edgar’s hand moves to her waist, pushing her forward.

Later, she will not recollect these moments, not exactly. The vision is a broken window, the shards flying everywhere. She remembers grabbing the pillow that Edgar offered. She remembers pushing the pillow over the other Betty’s mouth and nose. She remembers Edgar holding her hands down, grounding her, helping her do it.

But she can't put these images together, can't string them into one complete memory. 

It’s not real, it can’t be. It’s a trance, a trip.

This is just her subconscious having a meltdown. She will wake up and her world will be ordered and safe again.

“I think that’s enough…” Edgar rasps, fingers moving up and down her arm. “Don’t you?”

Betty drops the pillow.

The woman lying still on the mattress before her is wearing her brown coat. Her blond hair spills out of its ponytail.

 _No._ **_No_ ** _._

Betty brings her shaking hands to herself. Her flesh is covered in goosebumps. She is under-dressed. The garters pinch at her thighs. Her chest heaves, breasts straining against the corset. She touches the wig on her head. She wrenches it off with a gasp.

Edgar kneels by her side, unflappable.

Her fear seems to grow at his composure. 

He tips her chin up.

“I told you it’s hard. It’s very hard to change who you are. But you can do it. Just follow the sound of my voice.”  

Betty can see his face glinting golden in the dark. Even his voice is golden.

His hands come under her knees and drag her gently forward. His fingers brush up against the straps that mortify her thighs. Just like the half-moons in her palms.

“Let’s get you free of your old self, Elizabeth.”  

The will to fight is somehow secondary because - doesn’t he have a point - doesn’t she want to be free?

Betty’s thighs clench when he tears into the straps and rips the belt from her underwear. Warmth spreads like fire in her belly. It’s the fantasy she’s always harbored but never quite reckoned with.

He hums under his breath at the sight of her, splayed on the mattress.  She feels the vibration somewhere under the skin and she remembers foolishly Cheryl telling her that Edgar is a _snack._

She’s hungry for something beyond desire. Rather than be desirable, she’s always wanted to _be_ desire. She craved to jump from person to person and inspire madness.

In a sense, she's always wanted to be like Edgar. Magnetic and haunting. Golden. 

When his thumb catches on the hem of her underwear her head falls back.

But his voice is soft and chiding.

“No. Look at me, Elizabeth. You said you want to know everything.”

Betty breathes hard. He’s right. She does. Her courage rises to the occasion. She stares up at him.

She opens her mouth. She hears her own small, muffled cry as his fingers part her lips and sink their hooks in her. There’s no kindness in his touch, though his smile remains gentle.

He strokes her clit lazily, almost like he’s giving a lesson. “Can you feel yourself changing? Can you feel it from within?”

She wants to tell him, _no, it just feels good_ , just to rankle him, just to throw a wrench in his philosophy. But fuck - what kind of weapon is that, telling your enemy he’s making you want to come?

“Do you feel it, Elizabeth? It’s been a long time coming.”

His golden face, golden voice, golden breath are right against her throat, nipping at the skin under her jaw. His other hand cups her breast over the fabric as he slowly tears off the bodice, and she leans into the touch, wants to feel skin against skin.

His fingers are so wet with her that he doesn’t have to tell her.

When she comes, he holds her still, fingers inside her, wave after wave, her own face buried in gold.

 

She thinks, _it’s the drugs._

She thinks, _there are no drugs._

She thinks, _he's the drug._

 

 

He thinks, _she's braver than her mother._

He thinks, _tastes sweeter too._

He thinks, _I've been looking for you._

 

 

She startles awake, clutching at her chest, seeking a touch that is not there.

She stares up at a white ceiling. Perfectly innocuous.

Awareness comes to her slowly. She remembers this room. She used to bunk here with Ethel when this was a convent for troubled girls.

She rises on her elbows.

On the opposite bed, the redhead sits with her legs crossed, fiddling with a key-chain. 

Evelyn smiles.

“Oh good, you’re awake. Daddy said you passed out _right_ in his arms. Don’t worry, it happens a lot with new converts. He brought you here himself.”

Betty swings her legs down on the carpet. She feels woozy, but oddly sated. She doesn’t need anything at the moment. Everything is _fine_.

It unsettles her.

She thinks about Edgar carrying her to this room.

“Oh, he said to give you this,” Evelyn says, placing a piece of paper on the nightstand. “I have to go look after the rest. Will you be okay on your own?”

Betty nods tersely.

She wonders how long Evelyn stood there watching her sleep. How long did Edgar?

She grabs the piece of paper and unfolds it.

_If you still want to know everything._

_E._

There’s a phone number written underneath.  

Betty feels a chill, a strange pricking sensation that could not be defined solely as fear.

_Do you feel it, Elizabeth?_

She stuffs the piece of paper in her pocket. 

Good. She got her hands on his personal phone number. That's - that's something.

She doesn't want to think about _how_ she got it.

It was obviously some kind of induced hallucination. Smoke and mirrors.

Gold, gold everywhere. 

She shakes her head. 

He hasn't won.

She'll be better prepared next time, won't underestimate him.

She won't think about him more than she has to. 

 

 

 

Betty makes a small pile in the woods. She burns the lingerie and the wig.

She burns the name _Elizabeth_.

She hopes he'll burn too.


End file.
